


Sleight of Hand, Twist of Fate

by Telltales



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, Non-Linear Narrative, Post ME3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 19:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6207379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telltales/pseuds/Telltales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during ME2, and immediately after the events of ME3<br/>When the Reapers fall, Jack is left standing and there's still a lot of saving to be done.</p><p>Moderate language, some adult content, and very mild descriptions of injuries.<br/>(lowered the rating until M applies)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be taking liberties with the canonical ending of the game (based on the destruction choice). All will become evident, but the differences shouldn't be too noticeable. 
> 
> Bioware owns everything (my soul included).

 The last words Shepard said to Jack had buzzed around the biotic’s mind every minute since.

‘ _I love you too_.’ What a fucker.

In the beginning, it had taken a little while for Jack to get over herself and accept that not every word from the Commander’s mouth was a challenge. ‘ _Mind if I take a seat?_ ’ She hadn’t waited for confirmation, but still, not a challenge. ‘ _Heard you drink alien booze too. Here._ ’ A tossed bottle? Still not a challenge. ‘ _I love you too_ ’? Nobody ever said that shit without hearing it first, or expecting to hear it in return. Neither of them were the type for meaningful goodbyes, and even in the shitty fuzzy blue of the vidcomm, Jack had seen it in the woman’s eyes that impending doom hadn’t changed her ways. It was an ‘ _I’ll be back in a few, make sure you get your ass here in time to meet me'_ kind of look.

And Jack, like the sucker Shepard had turned her into, had done just that.

It had been the first time since she’d met the kids that Jack had left them to fend for themselves. She’d been with them every step of the way, kept an eye on them like a proud mom while they threw up barriers, protecting their units, protecting each other, sending the odd husk flying whenever they got a shot. And she hadn’t lost a single one of them.

After the sky flashed red and the Earth shook and boomed with the simultaneous falling bodies of the Reapers, everything started to slow down. Only the ground forces were left, but the husks, the marauders, and even the brutes seemed to have the fight knocked out of them. The threat was slowly ebbing, so once she was sure that the kids were out of harm’s way, Jack had ran, punched, threatened and yelled her way to the forward operating base.

There had only been a couple of hours between their brief exchange over vidcomm and the red flash. She had known it was Shepard’s doing from the moment she saw it. Not only was it the same familiar tone of red she used to see approaching from the corner of her eye below Normandy’s engineering, and the same she’d look out for on the rare occasion she ventured above deck; it was just like the redhead to go out in a big damn light show.

Jack had been so sure that Shepard was dead. She’d felt it in her gut. If she hadn’t died instantly in whatever explosion caused the flash of light, then Jack was convinced that while she was slogging through the one or so klicks of reaper-fucked London, Shepard was breathing her last and doing it alone.

She wasn’t completely wrong.

By the time she reached the FOB, it was the lack of constant gunfire that brought her to a standstill more than anything. Low flying shuttles passed overhead, whipping her hair around her cheeks, even tied back in her ponytail. The one she’d hitched a ride on took off again before her boots hit the dirt. Soldiers carried their wounded over their shoulders, in stretchers, in their arms, some towards the shelter of nearby buildings and others towards awaiting shuttles. Jack didn’t notice she was in the way until a rough voice commanded her to move.

Then she was really _there_.

Cries of the wounded had her pressing forward into a shit storm of a mess that only Shepard could be the eye of. The disgusting noises of dying husks sounded in her ears while she dodged and wove between soldiers and medics who all seemed to be heading in her direction. Had there not been so many people running with her, she would have pulverized everything, living or otherwise, in her way.

Corpses of every kind littered a slight decline, and at the bottom of the hill sat the biggest pile of rubble, rocks and general shit she’d ever seen or created. Shepard was probably in there somewhere and they were using mechs to lift the debris. _Mechs_. Jack was down that hill faster than she could say ‘ _Shepard was alive under there but you squashed her with an idiot in a huge fucking robotic suit and now she’s dead_ ’.

She knew her throat was going to be raw later from the way she shouted “ _HEY_ ,” at the mechs, pointing back the way she came and adding a coarse “ _MOVE_ ,” for good measure. They did. Jack had barely noticed the medic, accompanied by a young soldier, that had been scanning the rubble. The spark of angry energy twitching at Jack’s fingertips had the doctor flinching before she’d even started towards them.

In that annoyingly calm under pressure, know-it-all voice reserved for doctors and Shepard, the medic answered her question before she’d asked it.

“There’s a life sign. Weak and fading, but it’s there.”

A data pad displaying a scan of the rubble and debris was handed to the biotic. It only took a split second for her to see the slow-flashing blue dot that was Shepard, and the vague plan of action she’d conjured since she knew Shepard was under all that shit was firmly cemented.

“Get every single one of these idiots at least thirty meters clear of this heap, or you’re gonna have a lot more casualties on your hands.”

That was when the soldier piped up, but he didn’t have the time. “Who are-“

“- Do what she said, soldier.” Vega and what was left of his squad rallied around her. “Now.”

Jack cast a quick glance over her shoulder. She was doing this thing whether people were clear or not, a warning was more than she’d usually give.

“Hey Loca. Give me thirty seconds to get everyone clear then do whatever it is you’re gonna do.” 

His unquestioned trust in her had Jack breathing out the air she’d trapped with her clenched jaw.

“Muscles," she acknowledged, "You got ten.”

She waited until the storm of boots had made it a safe enough distance before she began. If Shepard got out to find one of her best pals had survived the reapers, only to be taken out by a biotically blasted chunk of rock, she would have been monumentally pissed.

Muscles later described her ‘blast’ as underwhelming and anticlimactic, and that her safety concerns where cute but unnecessary. The rubble turned out to be a lot heavier and harder to handle than Jack assumed, so her initial plan of: climb into the shit stack as far as you can, find Shepard, put a barrier around her then blast all the other crap away had to be even further improvised. Apparently, from Vega’s spot on the incline, it looked like she’d farted and dislodged a few rocks. All the debris and crap on top of Jack and Shepard just shook, rose for a second, then fell and rolled away to reveal the two of them in a blue bubble surrounded by dirt.

Before the dust could settle, before Jack could so much as lay her hands on Shepard, bodies swarmed. They bypassed her completely but Jack didn’t raise so much as an eyebrow in objection, not when she heard the familiar lilting accent giving orders, not until they peeled Shepard from whatever rock she’d been pinned to. Then she followed them, barely registering the noise of the shuttle landing at the bottom of the hill. Her gaze stuck to Shepard’s lifeless body then, frantically raking over a face marred by blood and scorch marks, burned armor sticking to skin in places, missing completely in others. There was blood congealing around a wound above her hip, and god, her arm…

“C’mon, Jack.” It was Vega again, his grip on her arm was gentle but the resistance he probably expected didn’t come, even when he started to guide her in a direction different to the one Shepard was being taken. They veered away from the shuttle intended for Shepard, heading further up the hill to where a second was waiting at the top. “Your kids’ve got you covered.”

 

 


	2. Squaring Up

“ _That the best you got, old lady?_ ”

Shepard rolled her eyes at Jacob’s echoing taunt from across the Normandy’s hangar. It reached her on the tail-end of another one of his biotic blasts, this one raising the hairs on her arms as she dodged it – just. It had taken her several attempts to insist that he drop rank during their workouts, and only recently had he started to oblige and actually put some power behind his hits, not to mention some tame snark with his smack talk.

“You’re only three years younger!” 

On the end of her retort, Shepard swung as much power into her volley as she could muster. She had wanted to yell back at him, but it came out as more of a wheeze. The momentum of her attempt at a shockwave had sent her reeling around, the backs of her knees hitting a crate and thankfully landing her on her ass on top of it. Looking up after her flail, she was just in time to see it fizzle out against the far end of the bay, a good five feet or so from a nonplussed, stationary Jacob.

It was getting harder to hide the real reason behind her request to train with him. The gaping holes in her biotic history were starting to show. She had no formal schooling, biotic or otherwise. She was completely self-taught in that regard, and it showed. If her general offensive sloppiness didn’t give her away soon, then the skull crushing headache she got from holding up her barrier for more than five seconds certainly would. Those were only the tip of a decade-old ice berg.

“You okay over there, Shep?” The teasing edge to Jacob’s tone was still there, but even from her place at the opposite side of the bay Shepard could hear the hint of concern. She rested her elbows on her knees, leaning forward to catch her breath. Everything was becoming tiring these days. Withholding the truth – especially from someone as forthcoming as Jacob Taylor – was a waste of crucial mental energy, the likes of which were running in increasingly short supply where Shepard was concerned.

She pushed some air through her lungs in rebuke, sitting herself upright.

“Shep?” She would have laughed if she had the breath. No one had called her that since she was a kid in the Reds. “You’re pushing it, Taylor,” she joked, swiping the back of her hand across her forehead. She stayed put as he made his way over. Staying still helped her head.

He shrugged his shoulders, pulling an energy drink from a cooler into his waiting hand and passing it to her once he was close enough. “You’re pushing yourself. Do I get to know what’s going on with you yet?”

In their past three weeks full of training sessions, their banter had descended more into the smack talking, gym buddies type of exchange. Shepard knew she could rely on Jacob on the field and in the ‘trust fall’ kind of way, but beyond that? In what only seemed to her like a few seconds, Shepard had gone through all her pre-rehearsed explanations, deeming each of them inadequate and filing them away for a later attempt.

“No,” she gave in brief substitute, though her smile was still playing on her lips.

“Alright,” he showed his palms, rocking back on the balls of his feet. “I can keep knocking my CO on her ass, no questions. No problem.”

Nodding her appreciation, Shepard took in a good gulp of her energy drink and tried her best to crunch her muscles against the growl she could feel rising in her stomach. For all the extra rations biotic crew members were allotted to boost calorific intake, hers never seemed to cut it. She’d recently started ordering ahead with her personal finances, so that whenever they docked on the Citadel there’d always be a little extra waiting to be loaded up. EDI had promised she wouldn’t tell, sort of.

“Commander?” Jacob’s voice cut through the comfortable silence she’d noticed they could share. On a ship, or indeed in a universe, where every conversation with Shepard was a means to some end or another, a shared companionable silence was a pretty nice change. “We done for the night? I got a few rifles I need to lock up.”

She waved him away. “Yeah, yeah. Sure.”

With a nod he made for the elevator. He was walking in a deliberate saunter, like he knew she was about to stop him. She conceded in a long breath. "Wait. I think the Cerberus docs gave me a retrofit.”

Jacob paused, stopping just short of a workbench and leaning back against it.

“You ‘think’?” The tone of his voice told her how stupidly obvious her statement had sounded.

“No, I mean- ” the Commander rubbed the neat scars at the back of her neck, beneath the hairline. “My amp. Before I… in '83, I had an L2. Got it in my early twenties.”

“Twenties? Damn,” the Armory Officer scratched at his arm absently, staring at Shepard as though he were trying to examine her amp through her skull. She’d heard post-puberty amp insertions were pretty rare, and in most cases pointless.

“I know, I know. I didn’t let on that I had any biotic ability until I was well out of my basic training.”

She explained the important parts to Jacob before he left for the night, finding that the words flowed with more ease than she expected. She hadn’t spoken of it to anyone other than Anderson out of respect, and Doctor Chakwas out of need. Garrus had found out the painful way. If any soldiers in her squad or under her command had noticed anything in the field over the years, they hadn’t mentioned anything.

Before she’d even signed up to the military she could handle herself, handle a gun to a higher standard than most new recruits. Shepard would be the first to admit that she was an asshole when she was younger. A bit of a narcissistic asshole with something to prove. Her thinly veiled cocktail of inferiority/superiority complexes, teamed with her ever-present need to prove her worth meant that the first sign of anything less than the best was hidden away to be worked on in private, until it was good enough to be revealed without a chance of failure.

Chambers would have had a field day with Private Shepard.

This was why, at the grand age of thirty-one, Shepard was receiving her first semblance of training in biotics, with a new implant considerably more powerful and even more of an unknown quantity than the old one. A little while ago, she wouldn’t have been bothered, would’ve just taken a swig of something, popped something to dull the headaches like she always did way back when with her L2, maybe lifted some weights in her cabin to take her mind off things. She wasn’t even as pissed as she ought to have been at Miranda, at Cerberus, for not bothering to let her know about the extra kick they’d given her machine, nor the side effects.

Then Jack happened.

Jack, who had barely taken the time to catch her breath after Purgatory before detonating her closure bomb on Pragia. She hadn’t shown a split second of hesitation on the landing pad of Teltin, nor when confronting the hell of her childhood and the shitty reality of it all. Jack had been through all this, with a lifetime full of crap behind her, and Shepard couldn’t even be bothered to confront the people who had even slightly wronged her. She might have reasoned that a lifetime of nearly dying on a daily basis, then _actually_ dying and missing two years of her life put things like grudges into perspective. But really? The older Shepard got, the more selective she was with the fights she picked. Collectors? Reapers? That’d be more than enough for most people.

An abandoned shit hole filled with Mercs and a disgusting secret? She had made time.

Getting to her feet, Shepard heard the hiss of the elevator before she had a chance to cease the rubbing of her numb ass.

 “Someone on your mind?”

She could hear the smirk in Garrus’s voice before she turned to watch him stroll into the hangar, cradling his favorite relic of a bolt action rifle from Earth. One look at his face and she could tell straight away where he was going with his line of questioning.

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

He gave a shrug. “Jacob left an hour ago. You two usually leave at the same time. Figured there was a reason you were hanging back tonight.”

“Keeping tabs on me, Vakarian?” she accused lightheartedly, inciting a small laugh. She grabbed her drink, making her way over to the workbench he seemed to prefer, watching as he gestured over his shoulder.

“See the glass up there?” he set down his rifle gently, like it was made of glass itself. “Means anyone walking by can see you down here. Before that, I asked EDI where you were. She was evasive.”

Shepard smiled. Apparently EDI was learning not to be _such_ a blabbermouth.

“Just like you.” Garrus looked up at her from the pieces of the rifle he’d already started to disassemble. “So, someone on your mind?”

She gave him nothing, swiping the stock of the rifle from the bench, along with a cloth. It was about the only part of the precious antique he’d let her touch.

“Rhymes with Object Nero?”

Shepard rolled her eyes, focusing them on what she was doing.

“… Mack?”

“Garrus!” She held up the polished wood in warning.

“Alright!” Just like that, he conceded and held out his hands gingerly for the part of his prized possession, which Shepard promptly handed over. It would be just like her to accidentally break the priceless nearly two hundred year old thing while threatening him with it. “I’m just saying,” he went on, “I find it extremely coincidental that you start up your ‘top secret’ training sessions with Jacob practically the week after welcoming our newest biotic to the team.”

“’Extremely coincidental’ is all it is.” That was her attempt at a bluff, and he called it just by looking at her. Shepard didn’t even bother protesting; they’d already had this conversation with slight variation, and she’d conceded then, too. She let go of her frustrated sigh. “She inspired me, that’s all.”

That perked him up. “Inspired you to what?” He set down his cleaning equipment, focusing his attention on her. He really wanted her to spell it out.

“You and Chambers should kick-start some group therapy sessions.” She deflected, shaking off the automatic discomfort she felt whenever the subject of her biotics was broached. “I’m just squaring up to my issues, Garrus. Figure it’s unfair of me to expect the best of my crew when I’m not giving the same in return.”

Garrus gave a satisfied chuckle, returning to his rifle. “Spoken like the true leader of group therapy.” She asked for that one. “Shepard,” he continued, “it’s all well and good you talking the talk, but if you don’t confront Miranda about your crap, find out exactly what you’re dealing with and how to help? She might as well have left you to float.”

“You know," She paused, folding her arms across her stomach to ward off another growl. "When I’m told to do something I was already planning on doing? The urgency with which I do that thing tends to drop a bit. You’ve no need to worry.”

“Tell that to my ass.”

Shepard barely held back a laugh at the memory he incited. Back when she had her L2, in one of the first fights of their blossoming friendship, unbeknownst to Garrus an enemy sniper had flanked him. Shepard had only noticed just as the merc was lining up a shot, and with every instinctive and panic-induced surge of power flooding through her neurons, she’d sent Garrus hurtling ass-first out of harm’s way with a flail of her biotics.   

“We’re alive, aren’t we?” She argued feebly.

“You needed training then, Shepard," he argued while he worked. "You seriously need it now. A coach, a mentor. Something. No offence to the guy, but Taylor isn’t the one for the job. You’re collecting – pardon me – quite the biotic task force. Next on the list is an _asari justicar_. Why’d you go to Jacob? Just curious.”

“Ease of access?” she thought aloud. “In all fairness, I only told him I wanted to stay loose. I didn’t mention anything about my stuff until tonight. As far as he knew, we were just two marines sparring.”

Shepard let out a long stream of air through pursed lips as she pushed off from her place against the wall. Hearing herself explain it out loud made her address her guilt for kind of using Jacob. Garrus was right; Shepard had known this from the moment she scrolled down her mental list of trusted biotic crew members and landed on Jacob for the role of instructor. She had knowingly counteracted herself, ‘addressing the problem’ by enlisting the help of someone she knew didn’t have the specific talents she needed. Jacob was primarily a soldier, like her. Shepard needed a biotic specialist.

“Right.” Garrus didn’t sound impressed, nor convinced that she was in any hurry to help herself. “EDI?”

“Yes, Garrus.” The melodious voice of the ship answered as promptly as ever. Shepard shot Garrus a questioning glance, but didn’t interrupt.

“How long until we reach Illium?” He asked.

“The Normandy must refuel before completing the jump to the Tasale system. ETA at Illium is approximately seventeen hundred hours, local time.”

Garrus seemed satisfied. “Thanks EDI.” It was funny how everyone always seemed to look to the ceiling whenever interacting with the AI's incorporeal voice. Garrus lowered his gaze back to Shepard, smiling as big as his face would allow. “That’s how long you have to talk to Miranda before I do it for you.”

“Wow, Garrus.”

He shrugged. “Someone’s gotta keep your ass in check.”

“ _Alright_.” Shepard sighed, tossing the cloth back at him. “But if I leave that conversation in more pain than I entered it in, I won’t be held responsible for what I do to your dextro-amino chocolate.”

It was time to walk the walk. Shepard began at a slow dawdle towards the elevator.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah! My Shep is a biotic, too. Thought it would be an interesting dynamic with Jack. 
> 
> Something I can already see myself struggling with is chapter layout in regards to the past and present.  
> Should scenes based on past events be kept separate from present events? Or would it be acceptable (and clear) to keep them in the same chapter  
> \-------------------------------  
> but separated by the likes of this? ^ or italics? I could have added present stuff to this chapter, but wasn't sure. Help.  
> Feedback would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise I'll figure it out myself and we'll all suffer!  
> (at this point I'm probably just talking/thinking to myself, which is cool too. Still helps).


	3. Delaying the Inevitable

Once she’d finished going over the files she was promised, Jack’s first few nights aboard the Normandy had her reviewing Alliance Vessel escape pod procedures, already thinking about ways to bail and get out of dodge at a moment’s notice. She had figured that anything was better than being kept like meat in a freezer - even being holstered like a weapon for Shepard to wield and fire whenever she pleased.

But Shepard… Shepard had taken the time to make sure that Jack didn’t feel that way. She’d come below deck most nights. At first it was just to check on her newest addition, see how many pieces of Jack’s story she could extract before she knew to back off. It hadn’t taken long for her to act like they were best pals. Every word out of the Commander’s mouth after ‘ _How’re you doing?_ ’, ‘ _Look at this Hahne-Kedar prototype! It comes in crimson!_ ’ and ‘ _Have you eaten today?_ ’ were reassurances, some subtle, some not so much, that Jack wasn’t a prisoner on _her_ ship.  

 _“I don’t want you to feel like you’re trapped here,”_ she’d blurted one night, a few beers in. She’d arrived with snacks under one arm, drinks under the other as always, like she was rolling up to a damned slumber party. _“The Illusive Shit gave me the ship, your file, but I’m in charge here. If you ever want to leave, you can.”_

Shepard was delusional, naive or incredibly dumb if she believed she was the one in control of her suicidal shit show. Not when Cerberus was involved. The younger woman had appreciated the gesture nonetheless, and honestly? Jack would never be military material, but following orders, watching Shepard kick people out of windows, killing assholes alongside her? It wasn’t so bad, and it beat the alternative. Being out and about, following Shepard in the physical sense? Couldn’t beat the view. Jack had made her personal stance on armor pretty clear whenever the topic arose, but she had to admit… Shepard’s love of the stuff was pretty fun to witness. The bits of her armor that were clunky and unflattering left a good enough amount to the imagination.

Sticking around to see the real thing underneath was good, too. The first few times returning to the Normandy after a mission, Jack would pretend to be packing her own gear away until the others left, snatching glances over her shoulder. It didn’t take long for her to cut the crap and stop hiding what she was really doing. More recently, she made herself comfortable in whichever spot of the shuttle bay had the best view of Shepard getting out of her armor. The Commander never seemed to mind.

“Y’know,” Jack pushed herself up onto a workbench, playing with the weight of her gun while she watched. “I’m starting to think you’ve got a type. Or a fetish.”

“Mm?” Shepard looked up from the arm thing she was unclasping. “For what?” Newly free of her helmet, her brow was damp with strands of red hair darker where they stuck to her forehead. “Punishment?”

Damn, that goofy half-smile.

“Everyone already knows about that, Shepard. I’m talking about the harem of biotic babes you’re gathering.”

The Commander reached behind herself then. From Jack’s position, Shepard looked like she was about to put her hands on her hips and give a good scolding. After a few seconds though, something hissed and off came the soldier’s chest piece, followed by the shoulders.

“First there was Cerberus Bitch Barbie. No, first there was Asari Barbie,” she gestured with her gun while she explained, “Heard all about the doc. Not part of the crew now, but she still counts.”

Shepard gave a light laugh, breathed the word, “Right,” while popping off her boots. She kind of looked like she was trying not to grunt her way out of her leg armor things. Still wore the smile, though.

“Then there was me,” Jack continued, admiring the curve of the Commander’s back, the tension in her arms while she extracted herself from the last of her plate. “Few days ago we got the thousand-years-old, would-bang asari lady. Kasumi says the assassin guy we got today is in the club, too. You’re on a roll, Girl Scout.”

Shepard finally stood up straight, free from the clown suit and looking like she was in a world of pain.

“Well,” she breathed, finding something to prop herself against while stepped into her combat boots. “I’m a biotic babe too. So really, it’s the Illusive Man with the fetish.”

“Yeah…” Jack scoffed, inspecting the grip of her handgun. “You don’t count.” Her response was quick, flippant, the kind that should have been accompanied by the matching hand gesture.  From the corner of her eye she saw Shepard straighten up. She had to fight her smile when she saw confusion furrow the Commander’s brow.

“Why not?”

Jack shrugged, slipping off the bench. “You don’t use yours when it counts. Or at all. Right?”

Shepard hadn’t mentioned anything, though Jack had known more or less from the moment she’d met the Commander that she was a biotic. When she and the other two Cerberus lackeys had caught up with Jack in the docking bay of Purgatory, even in her amped up, pissed off state she could feel the power radiating from the three of them even through the haze of her own. She’d just yet to actually _see_ it from Shepard.

Shepard looked like she wanted to argue. She didn’t.

The Commander leaned up against the wall, only moving to fold her arms across her chest. She didn’t seem pissed off or offended; if anything, she seemed tentatively curious. Either way, in almost all of their interactions to date, it had been Shepard who initiated conversation, who had Jack pinned with the dumbass metaphors and questions and general incessant chit-chat. The expression on Shepard’s face was starting to help Jack understand what the Commander might get from it all. She’d been wondering.

“Cerberus do it?” She asked, stowing her gun down in the waistband of her pants.

Shepard cleared her throat, met Jack’s gaze. “Do what?”

“Whatever it is that’s making you hold back.” With all the space available to them in the shuttle bay, neither one had strayed from the six or so feet between them. Jack advanced towards Shepard in a careful arc, amused when the Commander exhaled a sharp laugh.

“It really seem like I hold back in a fight to you?”

Jack rolled her eyes, wandering a few feet from the redhead. “Cut the macho shit, Shepard. You know what I’m saying.” When the Commander didn’t supply a retort, Jack pressed on. “Say your guns run out of ammo. Shields run out of juice, armor malfunctions or something. Left with just your two fists. What then?”

Shepard regarded Jack carefully. “I’ve been in shittier situations.”

Shepard’s stance was still the epitome of ease, the only visible tension being in her jaw. It wasn’t the first time Jack had watched the Commander try so hard to hold back while maintaining her military composure, though in the cases Jack recalled it was almost always for the sake of protocol or duty, or mediation. Shepard _always_ dropped the military bullshit when it was just the two of them. In the beginning, she’d made it an embarrassingly obvious point to. Jack had to wonder about the kinds of things the Commander would try to keep trapped so firmly on the tip of her tongue if she was riled up and off duty, if she would try at all. Just the two of them.

“Don’t doubt that.” Jack halted her advance. “I’d just wager you didn’t use the one weapon you’ve got in here,” she gestured to her own chest, “to get you out of it.” Jack stopped just short of Shepard, close enough to feel the power coiled up inside the woman, but not quite close enough that she’d be able to reach out and touch it. “That’s what I don’t get.”

Shepard gently pushed herself away from the wall, rolling onto the balls of her feet and straightening up into her full height, plus her boots. They were close enough that Shepard just about had to look down in order to meet Jack’s gaze.

“I don’t need you to get it -”

Jack was at eye level with the shit eating smile Shepard usually saved for the likes of Garrus and Joker, or enemies whose ass she was about to kick. Teamed with the rise and fall of Shepard’s chest, the sheen of sweat on her neck and the sheer musk filling the shorter woman’s lungs? Jack was almost willing to endure every minute it would take for her to get a seat at _Shepard Undressing: The Encore_. She could always ask Goto…

“- I just need you to watch my six.”

It was Jack’s turn to smile. “Always do.” She ducked around Shepard, taking the spot the Commander vacated. “What you _need,_ is to figure your shit out before you break something.”

“You _do_ care.” Shepard turned to face her, sliding her hands into the back pockets of her pants. “You could teach me.”

“Uh, no.” Jack scoffed, “No way am I being the only one around to slap medi-gel on your asshole when your biotics rip you a new one.”

She didn’t like the undertones of what Shepard had said. Joking or not, there was an assumptive quality, an assumed inevitability about Shepard’s tone that had brought about Jack’s instinctive rebuff.

Shepard looked like she was about to laugh, but something stopped her. “That can’t really happen… can it?”

Jack couldn’t stop her own bubble of laughter from escaping then. “No, dumbass.” She stood up straight, pushing off towards the elevator. “Learn the fine control and you could probably do it to someone else, though.”

Sometimes Jack couldn’t tell if the Commander was really as socially awkward as she came across when it was just the two of them, or if she laid it on thick to be cute. Social-awkwardness certainly wasn’t a trait she’d associate with a soldier of Shepard’s rank, and especially not with someone who could churn out the dramatic, loyalty-inspiring speeches at a moment’s notice.

Jack had witnessed so many versions of Shepard in the short time she’d spent in her company; the swift unstoppable force in battle, the negotiator, taker of names, the inspiring leader. There was also Shepard the heavyweight of food and the lightweight of drink. There was the Shepard who flirted like an awkward inexperienced teenager one night in the privacy of the subdeck, then the next day, in the shuttle on the way to a mission, she would be eye-fucking Jack so thoroughly that had she been made of lesser stuff, the younger biotic might have squirmed in her seat in front of the whole squad. There was the stoic Commander, the dorky dumbass, and the biotic Alliance veteran who’d survived all this time with a volatile ability she apparently knew shit-all about.

Could one person be all of those things? Shepard seemed to be a walking juxtaposition in so many areas of her life. A curious, well-adjusted individual in the place of Jack would probably relish the opportunity to discover which was the real Commander Shepard, what it was that made the savior of the galaxy tick. Jack, on the other hand… Jack didn’t know if she wanted to hurl herself into the pursuit of knowledge, or sprint in the opposite direction.

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Shepard was starting to notice a pattern when it came to her racing mind post-any interaction with Jack. She would go through a mental playback, dissecting everything she said, analyzing Jack’s every response and wondering what she could have said to make things play out better.

 _‘You could teach me’_.

At least she’d tried, Garrus would be proud. As for Shepard’s remaining appropriate tutors? The list was quickly dwindling. Kaidan and Liara were a no-go, and Thane had his own issues to deal with, he didn’t need hers too. As guilty as she felt about it, Shepard was still uncomfortable in Miranda’s company one-on-one. Whenever the Cerberus officer looked at her, Shepard felt like she was being dissected and put back together all over again, like the woman was trying to predict what Shepard was going to say next, or like she already could. No matter how grateful Shepard was for the time Miranda had invested in her and the effort it had taken to bring her back, Shepard couldn’t shake the nagging, itchy feeling that she’d been violated in more senses than the physical. She could always send a request for data to Miranda’s terminal to begin with, it was a step.

Samara was a viable option. Shepard’s only reservation when it came to receiving help from her alien crewmates, was that they were natural biotics. Asari had the inherent ability and the long lifespan to practice. Liara had once told Shepard all about how asari reproduce, and that it was the same reason her species are so naturally adept at biotics without the need for an amplifier. They have the natural ease in directing their entire nervous system towards one desired biotic effect, something that didn’t come as naturally to humans, and certainly not to Shepard.

On the elevator ride up to deck three, Shepard had tried to convince herself that Samara, the asari Matriarch and the one who had close to one thousand years to hone her biotics, couldn’t _possibly_  have learned anything about biotic amplifiers in humans and the issues associated with them. Just as Shepard had come to terms with the concept of accepting help, it still seemed as though she was looking for any possible reason to invalidate help from anyone.

It had been just under an hour since Jack had left Shepard to stew in the shuttle bay. She’d barely been able to conceal the strain her body was under. Getting out of her armor after a mission sometimes felt like wrestling a Krogan, and other times like slipping out of a silk robe. It all depended on how hot the fighting had been. Her muscles ached from being under almost constant stress, while her mind was exhausted from the effort it took to stay in control.

The very nature of biotics was release. Garrus had once suggested that maybe it was just a case of mind over matter. She’d very nearly punched him. Kaidan mentioned that in the beginning, kids learning how to control their biotics had to be shown how to not break their own limbs. Shepard had figured that much out herself a long time ago, but lately it felt as though with every burst of anger, adrenaline or frustration she was either going to throw out her back, or a bulkhead.

In time with every step towards Starboard Observation, Shepard clenched her fists then stretched out her fingers. A barrage of questions ready to be unleashed upon Samara coiled behind Shepard’s teeth, but when the doors opened to reveal the asari sitting in her bubble of biotics, an instinctive wave of respect had Shepard slowing her steps, clasping her hands behind her back. Shepard had masses of respect for anyone who could survive as long as Samara had in a galaxy such as theirs.

“Shepard,” Samara acknowledged Shepard’s presence, lowering the biotic field surrounding her. “Something is troubling you.”

Shepard didn’t even bother asking how the Justicar could tell. Instead, Shepard sat herself down in the space opposite Samara. “Is it that obvious?”

The asari smiled, only opening her eyes once Shepard had ceased her shuffling and made herself comfortable. “I could hear your footfalls the moment you stepped out of the elevator. This evening, you have all the grace of a Krogan, Commander.”

Shepard released the anxious breath she’d been holding. It was a relief to see that Samara was comfortable enough in her accommodation to poke fun at her new commanding officer. “You aren’t the first person to tell me that, believe it or not.”

“I believe it. Now, tell me what is on your mind.” Shepard ought to have felt uncomfortable with the way Samara so openly raked her eyes over Shepard’s body, but it felt more like a hands-free medical exam than it did a leering stare. “I could feel the tension in you the moment you arrived.”

“I’m uh, having some issues with my biotics,” she dove right in, “Cerberus gave me a new amp, I don’t think it’s agreeing with me.”

It was a lot easier to talk to Samara than Shepard had expected. There was little embarrassment in divulging a problem to someone who had probably seen it all, heard it all and a lot more.

“I always feel tense,” she went on, “especially after a fight, even an argument. Like I want to let fly everything I’m feeling, but if I did there would be a big mess to clean up. The feeling- the energy builds up, I can feel it all over,” she rubbed at the skin on her wrist, then the palm of her hand, “but I pull it back. It stays at a simmer, a really uncomfortable simmer.”

Samara listened intently, though her expression made it seem as though she had indeed heard Shepard’s symptoms before. She thought for a few moments before she responded.

“While asari are known to manufacture the best biotic amplifiers in the galaxy, personally I know very little about them.” Samara paused, thoughtfully tilting her head while she regarded Shepard. “Were you an asari Maiden presenting the same symptoms, I would advise you to seek a release. This release would usually be physical – to fight, to mate, or even to meld.”

Shepard started to fidget with her hands, picking at her fingers. She had a feeling she knew where this was going.

Samara watched. “With you, Shepard, the problem seems a mixture of the physical and the psychological. I would, however, advise that you address the latter before attempting the former.”

Shepard stilled her fidgeting, linking her fingers together. “So… You’re saying I need to work on the theory before I attempt the practical?” She could work with that, treat it like her officer exams or N7 theory.

Samara was amused. “Were it so simple. I am saying it would be wise of you to gain an understanding of the psychological barriers you have placed around yourself before attempting to tackle them. Would you ever head into battle wielding a weapon with which you’d never trained? One you’d never encountered previously and knew nothing about?”

Shepard didn’t need to think on that one. “I’d probably just point, shoot, and work with it.”

From the moment she’d phrased her question, Shepard could tell that Samara knew she’d used a bad analogy. She’d already pulled the air back into her lungs, readying the sigh she knew she’d expel before Shepard had finished her sentence.

“Perhaps that was a poor choice of words,” she conceded quickly, readying herself for a second attempt. “You’ve noticed what happens when I meditate.” Samara straightened her posture, clasping her hands together in her lap. “I think it would be of great benefit to you, a good way to begin targeting your thoughts and unblocking your stifled energy. If you’d let me, I would like to help guide you through it.”

Shepard followed suit, straightening herself up, ready and willing for whatever Samara had in mind. “Of course, thank you. I’ll try anything.”

“Alright,” Samara’s hands moved to rest atop her knees. “You’re going to have to trust me, Commander.”

“Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” Shepard could hear the apprehension in her voice. She felt like Samara was about to teach her the asari equivalent of the birds and bees.

“Very good,” Samara seemed pleased, if slightly disbelieving, ever the token of serenity and wisdom. “Turn around.”

Shepard complied, shuffling around on her ass so that she was facing the same direction as Samara, with the asari directly behind her.

“Now, remove your Cerberus uniform.”

Again, Shepard did as she was told. She pulled her uniform shirt off over her head, setting it beside her. Left only in the white training support vest she wore under her uniform, it was a relief to feel cooler air on her skin.

“And the vest, if you would.” When Shepard shot Samara an instinctive glance over her shoulder, the asari gave a smile in kind. “Skin on skin is preferable for what we're going to do, but not completely necessary if you’re uncomfortable.”

Facing forward, Shepard pulled off her vest, dropping it on top of her shirt. “I’m comfortable,” she reassured Samara, leaning forward slightly so that her elbows rested on her knees.

“Very good, we’ll begin.” Shepard felt Samara’s fingers curl around her shoulders then, gently coaxing the Commander to sit up straight. “Clear your mind. Try to let go of your worries, let every task you’ve yet to complete fall aside. With each new placement of pressure I apply, focus your mind on something specific. An insecurity, a feeling, a doubt. One thing at a time.”

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  

When Garrus was to inevitably ask for his detail-laden, chronologically accurate play-by-play of what happened with Samara, which he would as soon as Shepard told him about it, she already knew she would have difficulty in accurately describing the ways in which the asari had helped so much in just the space of two hours. Shepard couldn’t think of a means to describe the way Samara’s touch so deliciously extracted the tension from every fiber of Shepard’s muscle tissue and every joint in between, without it sounding overtly and inaccurately sexual. Sure, she’d been half naked for most of it, but Garrus needn’t know that.

Samara had started at the crown of Shepard’s skull and worked her way down to the base of the spine. The poor woman had persevered every time Shepard had almost drifted away under her relaxing touch, reminding the Commander to focus lest the entire exercise be one of futility. The point was, of course, to assign thought to feeling, to help Shepard tune into her own subconscious while overcoming her barriers, so to speak.

They saw progress after the first hour, with Shepard being shocked back into step one when she opened one eye to find herself encased inside her own biotic field, through her own volition – not from fear-induced reflex or instinctive self-preservation. It was something she’d witnessed time and time again in the field of battle, both alongside and against biotics, but something she never thought she’d be able to do. Not that she’d ever tried. She could still remember the first time she laid eyes on Jack; she had watched the woman charge towards two – or was it three? – huge mechs, surrounded by her rippling energy as she tore them apart. The first time Shepard met Samara, the Justicar had also been enveloped by her power, jumping off a ledge towards the enemy while her biotics let her glide seamlessly and harmlessly to the floor.

Be it raw unbridled carnage, or graceful power, Shepard needed something other than the untapped potential she could feel bristling under the surface. Contact with the Collectors was drawing ever closer, and she needed every edge she could harness.

After her visit with Samara, Shepard felt buzzed, to put it lightly. From starboard observation, she had walked to the mess like she had a shock baton up her ass, and left ten minutes later as though she’d guzzled or snorted the ship’s entire supply of coffee. Her muscles and the skin pulled over them tingled like a pleasant case of pins and needles. While the shuttle bay of a starship wasn’t the appropriate place to test out her raw unbridled carnage, Shepard reckoned that a few attempts at graceful falling couldn’t hurt.

She’d started small just in case, climbing atop Garrus’s workbench. Shepard had retraced the steps in her mind, just how Samara had shown her before stepping off the bench. The fall had been too quick, there hadn’t been enough time to think much less direct her energy, yet the Commander still grinned when for a split second, she felt a soft cushion of resistance beneath her boots before the metal of the floor.

From then, it was a case of increasing the height of her fall and flexing her abilities. The stack of storage crates just beyond the workbench were Shepard’s next target. Before she attempted to scale them, Shepard pulled off her Cerberus shirt, tossing it towards the bench absently.

It took a few enthusiastic tries, a few hard landings and bumps to the knees before Shepard began to see progress. In the first five jumps, she could only get the nodes below the waist to fire up, and only just before she was about to hit the ground. She was too pumped to focus and she knew it. It reminded her of the time she was maybe twelve or thirteen, when she’d stolen a replica katana from a street-dealer’s market stall. She’d spent the entire next day attempting to slice and chop anything and everything in the most badass fashion she could. Inevitably, she ended up slicing her own right shoulder, still had the scar.

Back atop the highest of the stacked crates, Shepard reined herself in with a deep, steadying breath. It would be just like her to make herself the exception to the ‘your biotics can’t rip you a new asshole’ rule.

Readying her arms at her either side, Shepard made another jump for it. She saw the blue field rush down her arms in time with the flood of power and adrenaline she felt through her veins. If it hadn’t have been for the stark hiss of the elevator she heard while drifting mid-air, she might have landed this one pain free. Instead, rather than nail the seamless Samara-style landing for the first time, the toes of Shepard’s boots caught the floor first, then her knees, stomach, tits, hands, cheek. If she had any air left in her lungs, she might have groaned in pain and embarrassment.

“Shepard. What – the fuck – are you doing?”

It was Jack. Of course it was Jack.

Shepard didn’t bother moving from the spot she'd scraped to a halt. The cold metal felt nice against her clammy body anyway. From the floor, Shepard watched while the horizontal form of Jack approached, lowering into a crouch when she was maybe an arm’s length away.

Jack had been on the squad with Shepard and Miranda the day they tracked and recruited Samara on Illium. She’d witnessed the very same biotic jump and descent that Shepard was trying to emulate. She’d probably know exactly what Shepard had been trying to do - and why - no matter what the Commander said, if she hadn’t already guessed.

With one eye, Shepard looked up at the more experienced biotic. She’d managed to send her own biotics to absorb most of the impact on her knees, but the come-down, in more than one sense of the word, had everywhere else aching.

“Jumping, landing,” she supplied lamely, wincing when she pushed her arms out at her either side. “Looked cool when Samara did it.”

Shepard heard Jack snort out a short laugh.

“You’re a fucking dumbass.”

The Commander groaned in agreement, rolling herself onto her back with an “Ow.”

Jack looked down at her with the most unabashed smile Shepard had seen her wear yet. “I wonder how the galaxy would feel if they knew their survival depended on a huge dork.”

Shepard supplied a wide smile in kind, stretching and testing for pain in her elbows and wrists.

“Dorks are cute,” she argued, fist-bumping Jack’s boot when her outstretched hand found it. “It could only really further endear me to them, I would’ve thought.”

“ _Sure_ ,” Jack straightened back up, and looking up at her Shepard had to wonder why she was even there. Had the Commander’s many hard landings over the past hour made enough racket to annoy Jack out of her foxhole? The woman had set up beneath engineering, loud noises interrupting her evening couldn’t have bothered her too much. Whatever the reason, Shepard wouldn’t question it further if it meant another moment with the view she currently afforded.

“I was watching up there for a good ten minutes before I decided I’d come put you out of your misery.”

For a split second Jack hesitated, and for a moment it looked as though she was going to offer Shepard a hand. She seemed to think better of it, stepping back instead to give Shepard room to get to her feet herself.

Once Shepard had slowly dragged herself upright, the convict turned back towards the elevator.

“C’mon, dumbass. I need a drink.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barbie's still around in the 2100's, right? Right??
> 
> I finished this when it was late and my eyes were tired. I'll check again tomorrow for typos and such.
> 
> Also, I've found a name that does my Shep justice in my eyes. I've been reluctant to give her a first name and use it for some reason.


	4. Irresistible Force

One of the very first things Jack had promised herself upon escaping Teltin, then again more recently after Purgatory, was that she’d never again let herself be in a position where she had to piss, shit, or puke in the same place she ate and slept. Unless she was on the run for her life and had no other choice. It had taken her the majority of her life, but Jack had come to terms with the fact that she was deserving of the same basic rights afforded to any intelligent being. And while she would quite happily take a dump on anything bearing the Cerberus logo, Shepard had offered her hospitality and the relative freedom that came with it. Cerberus vessel or not, Jack wouldn’t shit on that. Outside of the toilet, anyway.

Jack had been returning from the bathroom when she caught Shepard doing her Samara tribute routine. She’d paused after exiting the elevator, leaning against the glass with her shoulder while she watched Shepard take another leap. She laughed quietly to herself once she realized what the Commander had been trying to do. The woman wasn’t far from success, to be fair. After each jump Jack could see Shepard’s biotics flare up. At first they faintly engulfed her body, becoming more and more vivid, but only ever _just_ in time to catch her. Even from her spot above, Jack could tell that the woman was thinking too hard about it. So she’d offered her own brand of hospitality, stepping in before the Commander could do herself more damage than just a body slam to the floor. No matter how hilarious it was.

It was just the offer of a drink. No more than Shepard had made herself several times over with her visits to Jack’s temporary camp in the gut of the ship. Even still, there were no two ways about them, now. Jack had always been able to tell when someone wanted something more from her than they were letting on.

In the beginning, Shepard had rarely given herself away, barely let her gaze be caught lingering on Jack for longer than could be written off as an absentminded glance. Those lingering glances soon turned into the small twitches of a smile at the corner of the Commander’s mouth, barely-there recognition that she’d been caught looking and she wasn’t sorry. When she was finally confronted with the looks, the visits, why she really kept on coming back, she’d supplied the dumbshit answer of _“I’m in no hurry. I wanna know what makes you tick, first.”_

Jack hadn’t fallen for it then, but every moment since, Shepard had stayed true to her word. With every moment they’d spent alone, she had missed each opportunity to fuck up. And really? It was annoying the fuck out of Jack. She felt so removed from the situation sometimes that she didn’t know how to respond to it. It was like they were both stuck in a place where they maybe knew what the other wanted, but for some reason Shepard was holding back and didn’t want to push, and Jack didn’t want to pull. So they both just kind of… were. It was more limbo than purgatory, and Jack wanted out one way or another.

It was just the offer of a drink, but this time it was all Jack, and she was pretty sure that Shepard was exactly the kind of Girl Scout who would read into the nuance. Jack didn’t mind if she did, she needed _something_ , some kind of response, decision, clarification. Shepard wanted to play the slow game? Jack wanted to see the look on Shepard’s face when she realized just how well that would work out for her.

They’d been back in the pit for forty-five minutes, maybe an hour. Without her beer, Shepard had been on Jack’s own supply of liquors she kept under the cot. Each time they made port, she hit the closest bar or kiosk and stocked up.

“Don’t usually drink anything alien I can’t sniff without my eyes watering _,_ ” had been Shepard’s response to the bottle of Krogan booze Jack had shoved under her nose.

Such a square. She had stolen Jack’s spot, stretching her legs out on the cot while she propped her shoulders up against the wall, only upright enough to nurse the one bottle of human stuff she’d found in Jack’s stash - some Islay scotch she’d scored as a ‘peace offering’ from Donnelly and Daniels upstairs.

Jack sat on the table opposite the cot, watching the bottle rise and fall atop Shepard’s stomach. She reckoned if the Commander got to her feet, she’d be flat again in a second.

“I can’t get a good read on you, Shepard.”

From her spot, she couldn’t even tell if the Commander’s eyes were open. As soon as she spoke up, out of instant regret Jack hoped Shepard was asleep. No such luck.

Shepard let her head loll to the side, glancing over at Jack on the table.

“Whaddya mean?”

Jack let her own head fall back against the wall she was leaning against, rolling her eyes as she went. She’d undoubtedly dig herself a deeper hole if she tried to back out now. Instead, she waded in up to her waist.

“I _mean_ what I said,” she held on tight to the neck of her bottle. “It’s like, by day you’re this hard, righteous as shit, ass-kicker. Then by night you’re a giant dork, and a square who has to give her liquor a sniff test before she’ll drink it.”

Shepard just chuckled to herself, not bothering to lift the bottle out of the way. For all she seemed a square, she had still consumed enough of the scotch that the contents wouldn’t reach the top of the neck, even jerked around by her diaphragm.

“So?” Shepard sat up a little more, turning to face Jack fully, propping herself up on her elbow, bottle in hand. “What are you getting at?”

Jack bit back the immediate retort on her tongue, avoiding Shepard’s gaze while she was exercising control. “I don’t fuckin’ know. You’re weird, you don’t make sense.”

“I don’t make sense to _you_ ,” Shepard corrected with what was very nearly slurred speech, obviously amused by Jack’s less than positive reaction. “So I’m a dork _and_ a badass -” Jack scoffed “- you’re saying I can’t be both? People are multifaceted.”

“You obviously are,” Jack retorted, sitting with her legs folded beneath her, leaning forward in slight confrontation. “I’m _saying_ \- shit.” She sighed, leaning back again. “Forget it, Shepard. I don’t need to ‘get’ you.”

“Don’t get you, either.” Shepard fidgeted in her spot, looking like she was going to return to her reclined position but changing her mind. “But I don’t need to ‘get’ you to know that you’re more than you let on.” Shepard took a swig, finally letting herself slide back down onto her back. She gestured with her bottle, “Guess we’re even. When it comes to that, at least.”

They were both quiet for a long moment after that. As usual, Jack had ended a conversation with Shepard leaving none the wiser, left to draw her own conclusions. It didn’t seem to matter whether the woman was drunk or not; what was probably a straight answer in Shepard’s book was a fucking puzzle to Jack. One thing she knew for sure, though, they definitely were not even.

“The hell we are,” Jack spoke her mind. Her tone was softer, so much so that she thought Shepard hadn’t heard until she met Jack’s gaze again. “I don’t even know your first name.”

Jack could have done an extranet search for it, asked EDI, or hacked the file, but she had to wonder if anyone had actually ever _asked_ Shepard her first name. To everyone - from the Illusive Man to unfamiliar low-rank crew members and even the likes of Garrus and Joker, it seemed like she was known as just _Shepard_.

“What is it?”

Shepard’s smile was wonky, big, and full of obvious surprise.

“… Commander.” A little laugh burst through her tight lips. Apparently Jack had found the reason the _Commander_ didn’t drink things she couldn’t sniff without her eyes watering.

“God,” Jack fought her own smile. “You are such an annoying drunk.”

Shepard’s confined laughter hummed behind her lips. “Mm, I know.”

Jack watched while Shepard began the routine that would have her standing upright. First she swung her legs off her cot, then she slowly pushed her top half upright. The Commander finished off her bottle in one fell swig. When she eventually stood, she wasn’t as unsteady as Jack predicted she’d be; she was after all, still upright after five seconds. It would be an interesting journey up to the cabin, though.

Once on her feet, Shepard steadied herself with one hand on the wall, the other at the small of her back. “It’s Lexa.”

Not what Jack had been expecting, though she was surprised she even got an answer.

“Lexa,” Jack scoffed. “As in, _A_ lexa? Alexandria?” Such a girl scout.

“Lexa,” she repeated.

For a long moment Shepard’s… _Lexa’s_ green eyes nigh on pinned Jack to the wall behind her. In the three or so seconds the Commander held Jack there, the younger biotic could almost read in her eyes all the things she might have wanted to say. It always seemed like there was something holding Shepard back, always making her think twice rather than just _saying_ what was on her mind. Was it military conduct? A personal code? Standard issue insecurity? Whatever it was, it was infuriating. Sometimes Jack just wanted to slap it out of her, and some day soon she was going to. Shepard was always so goddamned patient with her, she ought to have learned by now that patience wasn’t in Jack’s diverse skillset.

When she finally spoke, all Shepard said was, “I should go,” followed by “G’night,” when she reached the bottom of the stairs that lead up and out of the pit.

“Sleep on your side, Girl Scout.” Jack found herself calling after her, leaning forward to watch Shepard walk. “Prop yourself up with a pillow. Can’t die choking on your own vomit, that’s just pathetic.”

When Shepard looked back over her shoulder, Jack could see the soft tone of surprise lift the Commander’s brow. Of course, not looking where she was going, Lexa stumbled on the first step, then again when she looked to find her footing.

“Wow,” Jack breathed, swinging her legs off the table to provide an escort for the lightweight.

 

* * *

 

 

A life lived in one cell or another, strapped to one bed then the next, somewhat altered Jack’s perception of time. Several hours had passed from the moment they’d touched down a beat behind Shepard’s shuttle. Morning could have rolled around a hundred times while the assorted group of doctors worked on her, dragging Shepard’s stubborn ass back from the brink once again. Knowing Miranda was somehow behind Shepard’s treatment should have instilled confidence in the ex-con, but it really didn’t.

The image of Lexa beneath all that rubble kept replaying behind Jack’s eyes. She might as well have been in multiple pieces. It would be just like Shepard to hold her body together with sheer pigheadedness and determination alone. Nevertheless, when they rolled Shepard back out of the operating room, Jack was convinced it would be in a body bag, or covered with a sheet.

They were at a small medical center out of London, mostly untouched by the war, save a power shortage. On the way in, there had barely been a clear enough path for the stretcher to get through. The wounded lay on any available surface, on the floor, in every hallway. When Shepard woke up, Jack would bet she’d be pissed to learn she’d been given a room to herself that could have taken in a lot more wounded from the discomfort of the halls.

The ex-con was glad someone had made the decision to prioritize Shepard, at last. As Jack acknowledged that the ‘someone’ was Miranda, the ex-Cerberus officer walked in.

Jack sat in a chair at Shepard’s bedside, resting her elbows on the mattress, her head propped up with her hands. Her back was to the door, but Jack knew it was Miranda. Not by the added thrum of biotic energy in the room, but by her damned perfume. Only Miranda could exit the ass-end of a war smelling good.

Neither woman acknowledged her presence. Jack didn’t bother looking up from the rise and fall of Shepard’s chest, but in her periphery she saw Miranda set down a data pad on the cabinet beside the bed. She then lit and placed candles in each corner of the room, returning to place the last at Shepard’s bedside.

Miranda was inspecting a leftover candle; it was long and thin, new wick, never lit. The type that needed a holder. Looking around, Jack could see that the five or six she’d brought were all pillar candles at different stages of life.

“I haven’t lit a candle in years.”

Miranda’s voiced lacked its usual robotic stiffness, as it had always sounded to Jack's ears. When Jack eventually looked up at Miranda in the orange of the candlelight, she could finally see the lines on that perfect face of hers, the bags under her eyes.

“Waste of oxygen in space, I suppose.”

Jack didn’t even have to try to bite back her retort. If she could use anything to measure how much she had matured in the space of a few months, her ability to hold back a snappy remark aimed at Miranda was definitely a marker.

Miranda, on the other hand, spoke Jack’s mind when she went on, admitting, “There was a time I would have said the same of you.”

She spoke like she was remembering the ‘good old days’, like the death threats they threw at each other like bitchy back and forth were moments she recalled with fondness. They had more or less ceased any open hostility at Shepard’s party. They had fought alongside each other since, seen some shit together, even witnessed each other’s personal shit. Neither woman had apologized in a manner of speaking. They weren’t enemies anymore, but they weren’t really friends, either. They had an understanding.

This was the first time they’d spoken since they’d brought Shepard in, an inch from death. Jack wasn’t interested in candles, or reminiscing.

“Is she gonna make it?”

Jack was interested in answers, facts.

“Of course, Jack.” Miranda seemed to retract into officer mode. “That’s why I’m here.”

Miranda fired up her omni-tool, shoving the candle into the inside pocket of her black combat jacket. Not skin tight as usual, and not a Cerberus logo to be seen.

“So this was all you?” Jack gestured to their surroundings, meaning the hospital, the doctors, the advanced equipment not commonplace in a civilian hospital, even one occupied by the military.

“If you’re referring to this room and everything in it, then yes.”

Jack watched an anatomic holo-scan representing Shepard project from the omni-tool, inhaling deeply when Miranda moved it around in her fingers, zooming in on the right shoulder.

“The team of doctors I assembled for Shepard are almost entirely comprised of Cerberus defectors, all experts in their respective fields. As for this place? The Alliance set it up to take in casualties who couldn’t be treated in the field. It’s the closest facility to the fighting, so I sent my team and all the equipment ahead to prepare here, while I retrieved Shepard.”

While Jack’s lip instinctively curled at the mention of Cerberus-anything, she was kind of glad that Shepard’s life hadn’t been in the hands of the Alliance alone. As good as they seemed, Jack had never heard of them bringing their dead back to life.

“How is she doing?”         

There was a chair at the opposite side of Shepard’s bed. Jack had been alternating between the two, only ever getting up to stretch her legs, piss, or pick at the stash of energy bars her kids had brought. Miranda took a seat, holding her omni-tool above Shepard for Jack to see.

The outline of the figure of Shepard was a dull white. Miranda zoomed out again to explain what everything represented.

“The white is organic tissue, the orange shows the cybernetic augmentations we made the first time around. Red marks are the sites of the recent injuries she sustained. Black circles are her nodules, and the blue, obviously,” she zoomed back in on the shoulder, where white met orange, then blue, “is her new arm.”

Jack let loose the breath she’d been holding, pushing her fingers through her hair.

Miranda lowered her omni-tool. “Jack, I’m sorry. There really was no salvaging it, it was completely-“

“- No, I know,” Jack sighed. “I saw it, I believe you.” Tearing her gaze from everything _wrong_ with her, Jack tuned herself back into the sound of Shepard’s breathing. “She’s alive,” Jack reassured herself. At this point they were both aware that this was all that mattered.

Sitting up straight, Jack let her arms fall into her lap. “So, you just had a spare cybernetic, bionic - prosthetic or whatever, right _arm_? Shepard’s size, just laying around?”

Jack could see Miranda give a small smile through the orange of the hologram.

“I made sure we were prepared for every eventuality.” Miranda rose from the chair, closing down her omni-tool. “I’m very good at my job.”

“Yeah,” was all Jack could say. There was no disputing the fact that whatever Miranda did, she did it with the utmost efficiency, down to the last detail, even in the middle of a shit storm.

For a long while, neither woman spoke a word. While Jack tried to imagine all of Shepard’s potential responses to waking up with a _new arm_ , most of them funny, a lot of them innuendos, she had to wonder what was going through Miranda’s mind at the same time.

This was the second time the woman had plucked Shepard from the edge of death, the second time she had Shepard’s life in her hands, been at the head of the team responsible for rebuilding her. Jack had to wonder while she watched Miranda’s gaze tethered to Lexa, if she was reliving the two years she spent watching an unconscious Commander Shepard, wondering if she’d ever actually wake up and knowing the consequences if she failed to make that happen.

There had been times in the past where Lexa had expressed – not a dislike – but an unease in regards to Miranda. She told Jack how in those first few months aboard the new Normandy she’d felt like her skin was crawling around Miranda, how she’d avoided the other woman, only being in her company when it was necessary. Back then Jack had thought Shepard was just appealing to Jack’s dislike of the ‘Cerberus Bitch’, providing a mutual distaste of the woman as something they could bond over. While she was pretty certain Shepard had overcome those mostly irrational feelings towards Miranda, Jack was sure as shit going to make sure Shepard expressed a heap of gratitude towards the woman when she woke up and everything was over.

The sound of Miranda shifting in her seat pulled Jack’s gaze. She was reaching for the data pad she set down earlier.

“This was the reason I came to see you in the first place,” she explained lightly, like she’d completely forgot. She tapped the pad into life.

“Yeah?” Jack muffled a yawn with the back of her hand.

“When I was putting her back together the first time, I had a lot of time spare to do my research.”

Jack couldn’t even be bothered to ask Miranda to get to the point. Instead, she just looked up from Shepard’s bandaged face and for once Miranda seemed uneasy with the eye contact. She focused on the data pad instead, scrolling while she spoke.

“Service record, medical history, psych evals, personal correspondence, extranet searches…” She trailed off. Jack’s gaze lifted from Miranda’s elegant fingers to watch discomfort form a line across her brow.

“I’m ashamed to admit it now,” she continued, “but the Illusive Man had me send him regular updates on Shepard in the weeks leading up to our assault on the Collector base. Everything from her personal requisition orders, to mission reports and surveil-“

“Miranda.”

She wasn’t sure if it was the drawn-out use of her name that stopped the older woman in her tracks, or the defeated sound of Jack’s voice, so drained of all patience and energy. The added silent, facially expressive equivalent of ‘ _skip the shit’_ seemed to do the job.

Miranda cleared her throat, offering the pad to Jack.

“Shepard often asked EDI to search archived music files from early twenty-first, late twentieth century Earth. The search terms she used were… specific. Oddly endearing.” She gestured to the pad Jack had set down on Shepard’s thigh. “You’ll see.”

When Jack looked up again, she caught Miranda studying Shepard’s face for a split second before she turned and made for the door. It would have been the perfect moment to ask the ex-Cerberus operative everything she wanted to know, but Pragia was well and truly behind her, the Illusive Man was dust, and in the back of her mind Jack had always been well aware that Miranda was never the cause of Jack’s pain. She was just the temporary, irritatingly perfect and punchable face of it.

“Hey, cheerleader.”

Miranda paused at the door, not glancing over her shoulder until she heard Jack’s one word of “Thanks.” Jack had the pad in her hand when she said it, but both biotics knew that her gratitude wasn’t just for the reading material. Or listening material.

Miranda nodded, her hand hovering over the door’s console.

“Just… If she doesn’t immediately figure out where you got that, don’t be too quick to tell her it was me.”

Jack smiled. “You after the hug of undying gratitude you didn’t get the first time?”

“Something like that.”

Once Miranda left, Jack wasted no time in sifting through the data pad. It was the first time she had a chance at any sort of glimpse into Lexa’s mind since their pseudo-goodbye over vidcom. Jack wanted to feel close to her. Sure, the woman was in the bed, within arm’s reach, but she wasn’t really _there_.

Every single entry in the pad was timestamped, accompanied by a word-for-word transcript and recording of Shepard’s requests to EDI. Jack selected a random entry.

 

_EDI: Good evening, Commander. I have categorized your playlists in the manner you specified. Would you like to select one now?_

_S: Yeah. Yeah. How did you categorize them again?_

_EDI: I used the search filters you applied to separate the songs by theme and mood._

_S: Mood?_

_EDI: Yes. The files were tagged with search terms such as ‘happy’, ‘sad’, ‘oldies’, ‘love songs’, ‘acoustic’, ‘rock’, ‘miss you’-_

_S: - Alright, thanks EDI. Surprise me._

  
Jack selected the playlist EDI chose first, linking it up with her omni-tool for better audio. She arched a brow when the song started, frowning at the almost synthetic-sounding music. She’d listened to her fair share of old human pop and rock, so she recognized when the sound of a tambourine came in, followed by a bass guitar. When the singing started, Jack instinctively shot Lexa an incredulous look.

 _‘See the stone set in your eyes,_  
_see the thorn twist in your side,_  
_I’ll wait, for you.’_

“What is this shit, Shepard?”

Jack almost laughed aloud out of sheer surprise. She had no idea Lexa could be such an angsty, mopey teenage girl. Looking at the timestamp attached to the entry, no big meaningful moment jumped out at her straight away.

 _‘My hands are tied, my body bruised,_  
_she got me with nothing to win,_  
 _and nothing left to lose.’_

It was times like these Jack wished EDI was around, even just as the holographic entity. She would ask what had happened on the days when Shepard would return to her cabin and request one of her ‘special playlists’. After a bad day did she just lay and mope? After a good result did she dance around in her underwear? Have any special songs she played to get herself in the mood? Jack wanted to know which set of songs were Shepard’s go-to after an evening under engineering. EDI’s memory was a bank of archived data – Jack’s was timeline she often got confused, with bits missing and bits she wasn't sure happened or not.

She checked the timestamp for the song again.

_‘And you give yourself away,  
and you give yourself away.’_

It was the night of one of their first real blow-ups. So Shepard had stormed off, fists balled at her sides, to go to her room and listen to _this_? Jack flicked through the titles of the other songs in the current playlist.

_‘I can’t live, with or without you,  
with or without you’_

Jack rolled her eyes, holding her head in her hands while she looked up at the rise and fall of Lexa’s chest.

“Yeah, same here.”

She gave a soft laugh. She had to, she wasn't going to cry.

“You fucker.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thinking about Jack growing as a person and all that entails gives me feels.  
> Figuring out how to do it properly and do her justice? Not so much.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been my first attempt at writing (with intent to continue) since I was a teenager. I'm older and incredibly rusty, but I'll hopefully get back into the swing of things.


End file.
